Dust to Dust
by Alex Kade
Summary: In the aftermath of the helicopter explosion, one of the Losers does his best to try to bring his team back together...


**A/N: **Too much rain makes me write things a little darker than normal... This one's kind of sad and philosophical, be warned.

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><p>Jensen paced back and forth outside the bar, his fingers carefully fidgeting around the small vial in his hand. The location didn't feel right for the conversation he was about to have with the men inside, even though he was the one who had picked it. He had called them all up, one by one, and asked them to meet him there; he had something important he needed to ask all of them.<p>

"Should've picked somewhere else," he mumbled to himself.

The bar was divey, cheap, lonely, full of mostly locals that couldn't afford to go anywhere nicer. The guys had spent an awful lot of time there in the past month since the chopper went down, drowning themselves in their own self pity surrounded by others like them who had no place better to go. Jensen had chosen it because it was familiar, because it was the first place that popped into his head, because he hadn't been thinking clearly.

Then again, _none_ of them had been thinking clearly lately. No one even batted an eye when Jensen said he was leaving. They didn't ask where he was going or how long he'd be gone for. Clay was the only one who even questioned if Jensen would be back, and nodded half-heartedly when the answer was a yes. When Jake called them up out of the blue two weeks later and told them to meet him at the bar, no one seemed to care what he had been up to; no one asked him if he was all right. Everyone was in their own little world inside their heads, inside their guilt; and they drifted around together more like the pieces of a shipwrecked boat following the same current instead of the close-knit team they once were.

Jensen pocketed the little vial and sucked in a steadying breath before pushing the door open. He spotted the rest of his friends sitting at their usual corner table and waved an arm at Cougar when the sniper looked up. With a simple tilt of his head, he motioned that they were to meet him outside, waiting for only a second to see if Cougar would pass the message along. He slipped back out and leaned back against the wall for several minutes until finally Clay stepped through the door.

"They coming?" Jensen asked casually.

"Yeah, just settling up," Clay answered just as casually, showing no acknowledgment of the fact that this was the first time in weeks that he had seen the tech. It was just another day in their secret hell.

As the others filtered out of the bar no one said a word as Jensen set out for his new choice of location. They just followed quietly behind him, not so much as curious to hear what he had to say, but more because they were on autopilot and he was giving them something to do. If they were surprised when Jensen led them into a botanical garden behind a church, no one mentioned it. They didn't speak as they wound through the hundreds of sleeping red roses that looked almost black in the moonlight. When they followed him past statues of weeping angels, no one said a word. As he sat them down around a stone table at the feet of Christ on his fated crucifix, they stayed silent. It was only when he placed a vial of ash in the center of their circle did they begin to show signs that the deaths they had been hiding behind weren't real.

"What's this?" Clay asked solemnly, staring at the vial as if he were almost afraid to touch it.

Jensen swallowed, keeping his attention glued firmly to the table. "The kids, they, uh, some of them weren't completely…" He closed his eyes for a brief second before continuing. "I went to the cremation ceremony."

He didn't have to look up to know that all eyes were on him now. Too late to turn back, he reached out and picked up the precious vial once again, holding it up so its contents were caught in the light of the one overhanging lamp. The meaning behind the object in his hand settled into the others, setting off a myriad of emotions as they watched him gently roll his thumb around the smooth glass. Clay's face was a mask of pure loss and failure, pained tears glistened in Pooch's eyes, Cougar nearly shook with pent up rage, and Roque turned away from it with a heavy sigh.

"Why?" Clay croaked, almost choking on the one word.

"I was hoping to…well, I wanted…I was just going to do it myself but I thought maybe you might…." Jake shook his head and mumbled, "You guys'll probably think this is stupid."

"Try us," the Colonel said softly, but the commanding tone that had been missing for so long crept ever-so-slightly back into his voice.

Jensen blew out a long breath and, still not making eye contact with the others, began to explain. "I had this friend in high school… His, uh, his grandmother pretty much raised him and she was…well, she meant everything to him. When she died the year after we graduated, the thought of not having her around…he wasn't handling it very well. He kept going on about how the world didn't feel right without her in it, how he wished there was some way to bring her back to life… I didn't really know what to do for him so I started looking up different ways to deal with grief. I ended up stumbling onto this thing people did with tattoos; it was exactly what he needed. He got a picture done of her favorite flower… We had to fly two states over to find a tattoo artist who was willing to…" He realized he was rambling and shook his head clear. Ready to get to the point, he finally looked up at everyone, wanting to make sure they understood what he was asking of them by telling them this story. "We had the guy mix some of the cremated ashes into the tattoo ink… I found a place three blocks from here that'll do it…"

He watched their expressions closely, waiting for them to laugh or sneer or judge. None of them did.

_The next day…_

Five men strolled out of the tattoo parlor, none exactly wearing smiles but all feeling an odd sort of satisfaction, a renewed spark to the life that had been slipping from their grasp. The bandages they sported – Jensen's down on the right side of his abdomen, Pooch's high on his left arm, Roque's midway down his back just below his right shoulder blade, Cougar's on the left side of his chest where he had his ink worked into an older tattoo, and Clay's wrapped between the thumb and forefinger on his left hand – were worn like badges of honor. The stinging pain on their flesh reminded them of what they were living on for, what they had to fight for, who they were carrying inside them. They had chosen the responsibility of bringing back the spirits of the lost, allowing them to live again through their own bodies, uniting them again as the family they had been slowly losing sight of.

Jensen, Pooch, Roque, and Cougar all felt the weight of the number _25 _now forever inked with ash into their flesh; and Clay, well, he chose to accept the lonely little teddy bear that a smiling boy had offered him not so long ago…

_**Fin**_


End file.
